EMACS 1 "1995 December 7"

Table of contents

EMACS 1 "1995 December 7"

GNU
is a version of
Emacs,
written by the author of the original (PDP-10)
Emacs,
Richard Stallman.

The primary documentation of GNU Emacs is in the GNU Emacs Manual,
which you can read on line using Info, a subsystem of Emacs. Please
look there for complete and up-to-date documentation. This man page
is updated only when someone volunteers to do so; the Emacs
maintainers' priority goal is to minimize the amount of time this man
page takes away from other more useful projects.

The user functionality of GNU Emacs encompasses
everything other
Emacs
editors do, and it is easily extensible since its
editing commands are written in Lisp.

Emacs
has an extensive interactive help facility,
but the facility assumes that you know how to manipulate
Emacs
windows and buffers.
CTRL-h (backspace
or CTRL-h) enters the Help facility. Help Tutorial (CTRL-h t)
requests an interactive tutorial which can teach beginners the fundamentals
of
Emacs
in a few minutes.
Help Apropos (CTRL-h a) helps you
find a command given its functionality, Help Character (CTRL-h c)
describes a given character's effect, and Help Function (CTRL-h f)
describes a given Lisp function specified by name.

Emacs's
Undo can undo several steps of modification to your buffers, so it is
easy to recover from editing mistakes.

There is an extensive reference manual, but
users of other Emacses
should have little trouble adapting even
without a copy. Users new to
Emacs
will be able
to use basic features fairly rapidly by studying the tutorial and
using the self-documentation features.

The following options are of general interest:

file

Edit
file.

\+number

Go to the line specified by
number
(do not insert a space between the "+" sign and
the number).

-q

Do not load an init file.

-u user

Load
user's
init file.

-t file

Use specified
file
as the terminal instead of using stdin/stdout.
This must be the first argument specified in the command line.

The following options are lisp-oriented
(these options are processed in the order encountered):

-f function

Execute the lisp function
function.

-l file

Load the lisp code in the file
file.

The following options are useful when running
Emacs
as a batch editor:

-batch

Edit in batch mode. The editor will send messages to stderr. This
option must be the first in the argument list. You must use -l and -f
options to specify files to execute and functions to call.

-kill

Exit
Emacs
while in batch mode.

Emacs
has been tailored to work well with the X window system.
If you run
Emacs
from under X windows, it will create its own X window to
display in. You will probably want to start the editor
as a background process
so that you can continue using your original window.

Emacs
can be started with the following X switches:

-name name

Specifies the name which should be assigned to the initial
Emacs
window. This controls looking up X resources as well as the window title.

-title name

Specifies the title for the initial X window.

-r

Display the
Emacs
window in reverse video.

-i

Use the "kitchen sink" bitmap icon when iconifying the
Emacs
window.

-font font, -fn font

Set the
Emacs
window's font to that specified by
font.
You will find the various
X
fonts in the
/usr/lib/X11/fonts
directory.
Note that
Emacs
will only accept fixed width fonts.
Under the X11 Release 4 font-naming conventions, any font with the
value "m" or "c" in the eleventh field of the font name is a fixed
width font. Furthermore, fonts whose name are of the form
widthxheight
are generally fixed width, as is the font
fixed.
See
xlsfonts(1)
for more information.
When you specify a font, be sure to put a space between the
switch and the font name.

-b pixels

Set the
Emacs
window's border width to the number of pixels specified by
pixels.
Defaults to one pixel on each side of the window.

-ib pixels

Set the window's internal border width to the number of pixels specified
by
pixels.
Defaults to one pixel of padding on each side of the window.

-geometry geometry

Set the
Emacs
window's width, height, and position as specified. The geometry
specification is in the standard X format; see
X(1)
for more information.
The width and height are specified in characters; the default is 80 by
24.

-fg color

On color displays, sets the color of the text.
See the file
/usr/lib/X11/rgb.txt
for a list of valid
color names.

-bg color

On color displays,
sets the color of the window's background.

-bd color

On color displays,
sets the color of the window's border.

-cr color

On color displays,
sets the color of the window's text cursor.

-ms color

On color displays,
sets the color of the window's mouse cursor.

-d displayname, -display displayname

Create the
Emacs
window on the display specified by
displayname.
Must be the first option specified in the command line.

-nw

Tells
Emacs
not to use its special interface to X. If you use this
switch when invoking
Emacs
from an
xterm(1)
window, display is done in that window.
This must be the first option specified in the command line.

You can set
X
default values for your
Emacs
windows in your
\.Xresources
file (see
xrdb(1)).
Use the following format:

emacs.keyword:value

where
value
specifies the default value of
keyword.Emacs
lets you set default values for the following keywords:

font

Sets the window's text font.

reverseVideo

If
reverseVideo's
value is set to
on,
the window will be displayed in reverse video.

bitmapIcon

If
bitmapIcon's
value is set to
on,
the window will iconify into the "kitchen sink."

borderWidth

Sets the window's border width in pixels.

internalBorder

Sets the window's internal border width in pixels.

foreground

For color displays,
sets the window's text color.

background

For color displays,
sets the window's background color.

borderColor

For color displays,
sets the color of the window's border.

cursorColor

For color displays,
sets the color of the window's text cursor.

pointerColor

For color displays,
sets the color of the window's mouse cursor.

geometry

Sets the geometry of the
Emacs
window (as described above).

title

Sets the title of the
Emacs
window.

iconName

Sets the icon name for the
Emacs
window icon.

If you try to set color values while using a black and white display,
the window's characteristics will default as follows:
the foreground color will be set to black,
the background color will be set to white,
the border color will be set to grey,
and the text and mouse cursors will be set to black.

The following lists the mouse button bindings for the
Emacs
window under X11.
MOUSE BUTTON FUNCTION

left Set point.

middle Paste text.

right Cut text into X cut buffer.

SHIFT-middle Cut text into X cut buffer.

SHIFT-right Paste text.

CTRL-middle Cut text into X cut buffer and kill it.

CTRL-right Select this window, then split it into
two windows. Same as typing CTRL-x 2.

CTRL-SHIFT-left X buffer menu--hold the buttons and keys
down, wait for menu to appear, select
buffer, and release. Move mouse out of
menu and release to cancel.

CTRL-SHIFT-middle X help menu--pop up index card menu for
Emacs help.

CTRL-SHIFT-right Select window with mouse, and delete all
other windows. Same as typing CTRL-x 1.

You can order printed copies of the GNU Emacs Manual from the Free
Software Foundation, which develops GNU software. See the file ORDERS
for ordering information.

Your local Emacs maintainer might also have copies available. As
with all software and publications from FSF, everyone is permitted to
make and distribute copies of the Emacs manual. The TeX source to the
manual is also included in the Emacs source distribution.

/usr/local/info - files for the Info documentation browser
(a subsystem of Emacs) to refer to. Currently not much of Unix
is documented here, but the complete text of the Emacs reference
manual is included in a convenient tree structured form.
/usr/local/share/emacs/$VERSION/src - C source files and object files
/usr/local/share/emacs/$VERSION/lisp - Lisp source files and compiled files
that define most editing commands. Some are preloaded;
others are autoloaded from this directory when used.
/usr/local/share/emacs/$VERSION/etc - various programs that are used with
GNU Emacs, and some files of information.
/usr/local/share/emacs/$VERSION/etc/DOC.* - contains the documentation
strings for the Lisp primitives and preloaded Lisp functions
of GNU Emacs. They are stored here to reduce the size of
Emacs proper.
/usr/local/share/emacs/$VERSION/etc/OTHER.EMACSES discusses GNU Emacs
vs. other versions of Emacs.

/usr/local/share/emacs/$VERSION/etc/SERVICE lists people offering
various services to assist users of GNU Emacs, including education,
troubleshooting, porting and customization.

These files also have information useful to anyone wishing to write
programs in the Emacs Lisp extension language, which has not yet been fully
documented.
/usr/local/com/emacs/lock - holds lock files that are made for all
files being modified in Emacs, to prevent simultaneous modification
of one file by two users.
/usr/lib/X11/rgb.txt - list of valid X color names.

There is a mailing list, bug-gnu-emacs@prep.ai.mit.edu on the internet
(ucbvax!prep.ai.mit.edu!bug-gnu-emacs on UUCPnet), for reporting Emacs
bugs and fixes. But before reporting something as a bug, please try
to be sure that it really is a bug, not a misunderstanding or a
deliberate feature. We ask you to read the section ``Reporting Emacs
Bugs'' near the end of the reference manual (or Info system) for hints
on how and when to report bugs. Also, include the version number of
the Emacs you are running in every bug report that you send in.
Do not expect a personal answer to a bug report. The purpose of reporting
bugs is to get them fixed for everyone in the next release, if possible.
For personal assistance, look in the SERVICE file (see above) for
a list of people who offer it.
Please do not send anything but bug reports to this mailing list.
Send requests to be added to mailing lists to the special list
info-gnu-emacs-request@prep.ai.mit.edu (or the corresponding UUCP
address). For more information about Emacs mailing lists, see the
file /usr/local/emacs/etc/MAILINGLISTS. Bugs tend actually to be
fixed if they can be isolated, so it is in your interest to report
them in such a way that they can be easily reproduced.

Bugs that I know about are: shell will not work with programs
running in Raw mode on some Unix versions.

Emacs
is free; anyone may redistribute copies of
Emacs
to
anyone under the terms stated in the
Emacs
General Public License,
a copy of which accompanies each copy of
Emacs
and which also
appears in the reference manual.

Copies of
Emacs
may sometimes be received packaged with distributions of Unix systems,
but it is never included in the scope of any license covering those
systems. Such inclusion violates the terms on which distribution
is permitted. In fact, the primary purpose of the General Public
License is to prohibit anyone from attaching any other restrictions
to redistribution of
Emacs.

Richard Stallman encourages you to improve and extend
Emacs,
and urges that
you contribute your extensions to the GNU library. Eventually GNU
(Gnu's Not Unix) will be a complete replacement for Berkeley
Unix.
Everyone will be free to use, copy, study and change the GNU system.